Science

For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker. But the tiny mammal with its probing trunk-like nose was quietly thriving in the arid, rocky landscape of the Horn of Africa, researchers said Tuesday. The elusive,

One of the major challenges in turning quantum technology from potential to reality is getting super-delicate quantum states to last longer than a few milliseconds – and scientists just raised the bar by a factor of about 10,000. They did it by tackling something called decoherence: that’s the disruption from surrounding noise caused by vibrations, fluctuations

The lives and deaths of animals that lived more than 2,000 years ago are coming to light. A cat, a snake, and a bird that were mummified in ancient Egypt have undergone non-invasive, high-resolution 3D X-ray scans, helping us to understand how they were kept, and the complex mummification procedures practised thousands of years ago.

If you’re a fan of science fiction, chances are you encountered a few franchises where humanity has spread throughout the known Universe. The ships that allow them to do this, maybe they use a warp drive, maybe they “fold space,” maybe have a faster-than-light (FTL) or “jump” drive. It’s a cool idea, the thought of

The world’s oceans have turned into a veritable sponge for our emissions, and new climate models suggest we’ve soaked them right through. Since the 1950s, our planet’s vast bodies of water have absorbed roughly 93 percent of the energy entering the climate system, and while most of that heating has been observed near the ocean

In 2020, we’re sadly used to hearing how disinformation campaigns are being waged to influence people’s thinking, spread fake news, and further political agendas But the same tactics aren’t solely a threat in terms of long-term social manipulation, scientists warn. In a new study, researchers demonstrate that weaponised disinformation campaigns could also hypothetically be exploited to

Northrop Grumman statement: “We will determine next steps once the debriefing process concludes.” WASHINGTON — When Northrop Grumman unveiled its OmegA rocket in April 2018, the company was clear that it developed the vehicle for the sole purpose of challenging United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for national security space launch contracts. The Air Force decided

Radiation that would reduce the DNA inside our own cells into genetic confetti is no match for the microscopic tough-guy known as a tardigrade, and we just got closer to understanding just how these critters are so tough. Their protection works in part due to the shielding provided by a special ‘damage suppression’ protein called

For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record. Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. That’s equivalent

Prehistoric sculptures depicting human-like faces have some scientists thinking certain expressions might well be universal across time and culture. New research has found ancient Maya people and other Mesoamerican civilisations, such as the Olmec, were sculpting scenes of pain, elation, sadness, anger, strain and determination in ways that are still recognisable to us up to

The International Space Station (ISS), in Earth orbit at hundreds of kilometres altitude, is not perfectly airtight. Every day, the cabin loses a minute amount of air, monitored carefully so that a liveable atmospheric pressure can be maintained, and to identify leaks. Now the latter has come to pass, just two years after the last

Greenland’s massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to findings released Thursday. That is equivalent to an additional 3 million tonnes of water streaming into global oceans every day, or six Olympic pools every second. Crumbling glaciers and torrents

WASHINGTON — Fleet operator SES on Aug. 20 said it selected SpaceX to launch four recently ordered O3b mPower broadband satellites.  The agreement means SpaceX will launch all 11 of SES’s O3b mPower satellites to medium Earth orbit across four Falcon 9 launches. Boeing is building all 11 mPower satellites.  SES chose SpaceX in 2019

A gigantic fleet of floating rocks, spewed up from an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean, floated across the waves for thousands of miles. Eventually, it made it all the way to Australia, then started on a new project: revitalising the world’s largest (and very threatened) coral reef system. This unlikely chain of events may sound

A pair of Danish computer scientists have solved a longstanding mathematics puzzle that lay dormant for decades, after researchers failed to make substantial progress on it since the 1990s. The abstract problem in question is part of what’s called graph theory, and specifically concerns the challenge of finding an algorithm to resolve the planarity of

Having strong, biased opinions may say more about your own individual way of behaving in group situations than it does about your level of identification with the values or ideals of any particular group, new research suggests. This behavioural trait – which researchers call ‘groupiness’ – could mean that individuals will consistently demonstrate ‘groupy’ behaviour

Life was trying, but it wasn’t working out. As the Late Devonian period dragged on, more and more living things died out, culminating in one of the greatest mass extinction events our planet has ever witnessed, approximately 359 million years ago. The culprit responsible for so much death may not have been local, scientists now

California’s Death Valley recorded what may be its hottest ever temperature on Sunday (August 16) – a blazing 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius). If that National Weather Service (NWS) measurement holds up, it will have been the hottest August temperature recorded there by 3 F (1.7 C), the hottest temperature recorded in Death Valley

Scientists are ironing out the kinks for an ‘anti-solar power’ cell, one that can harvest energy at nighttime, even when the sun isn’t shining. Instead of absorbing light from the Sun and converting it into electricity, like a normal solar panel would, this type of technology works in reverse. At night, when there’s no incoming

Armagno was commissioned into the Space Force and promoted to three-star general Aug. 17 in a ceremony at the Pentagon. WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno is the first female U.S. Air Force general officer to transfer to the U.S. Space Force. Armagno was commissioned into the Space Force and promoted to three-star general Aug.

An international team of marine scientists have discovered 30 new species of invertebrates in deep water surrounding the Galapagos, the Ecuadoran archipelago’s national park authorities announced Monday. The deep-sea experts discovered fragile coral and sponge communities including 10 bamboo corals, four octocorals, one brittle star and 11 sponges – as well as four new species

The existence of time crystals – a particularly fascinating state of matter – was only confirmed a few short years ago, but physicists have already made a pretty major breakthrough: they have induced and observed an interaction between two time crystals. In a helium-3 superfluid, two time crystals exchanged quasiparticles without disrupting their coherence; an

They may not have had fancy mattresses, but the earliest human ancestors were quite capable of putting together a cosy place to sleep. Newly found remains of human bedding in an ancient archaeological site show just how clever they were at doing so. In the well-known site of Border Cave in South Africa, archaeologists have found

NASA’s Mars Odyssey probe has been orbiting the Red Planet for almost 19 years now, making it the longest continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth. That incredible tour of duty means it’s witnessed lots of strange things we can’t easily see from our terrestrial vantage point, and this stunning, colourful

A ship that has leaked more than 1,000 tonnes of oil in pristine waters off the Mauritius coast has split in two, its Japanese operator said Sunday. The bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off the southeastern coast of Mauritius on July 25 and began oozing oil more than a week

WASHINGTON — Arianespace on Aug. 15 launched two communications satellites and a satellite servicer on an Ariane 5 rocket, completing the company’s first launch since the reopening of the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.  Ariane 5 lifted off at 6:04 p.m. Eastern and deployed the spacecraft into geostationary transfer orbits over the course

There are some days when the rain falls peacefully and gently, nourishing the Earth. But on some other days the rain comes down in a torrential downpour that meteorologists like me call a cloudburst. Standing outside in one of these intense rainstorms can feel like being smothered in a heavy, wet towel. These storms can

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have cultivated a close relationship with fire. But for all our fascination and intimacy, both with its dangers and its uses, fire can still stun us with something we’ve never seen before. The blue whirl flame was discovered quite by accident just a few years ago. Scientists were

For almost as long as stories have been told, stories have been deconstructed. For centuries, theorists, philosophers, and scholars have been pulling narrative structures apart, trying to pin down the most fundamental elements that give stories shape and meaning. As far back as the 4th century BCE, Aristotle was dissecting story structures in this vein,

The sudden dimming of one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse, could be due to a dust cloud spewing up from its surface, astronomers said on Thursday. The mystery has enthralled skywatchers since the star – part of the Orion constellation – began to lose luminosity last October, with some experts suggesting